Dungeons & Dragons

Adventure #11

Fighting Archamedes & the Shadow Plane

29

JAN/17

Pickles had a decision to make as he felt his Patron speak out to him, demanding he push Sophia into the portal mirror. Zaburk only knew of the legend of the 3 wands and what they were capable of, but Pickles moved quicker, mentally ordering his rottweiler, Kosher, to do his dirty work. Obligingly the dog did as instructed, and Sophia stumbled into the portal. In her place was Archamedes, strangely portrayed as a woman, who animated nearby furniture to attack. Her spells were powerful, and once Pickles and Zaburk launch their assault, splitting their attacks between the furniture and her, she unleashed a fireball that nearly killed Pickles and brought down their dogs.

Pickles focused on the mage and soon brought her down, which caused the animated objects to fall lifeless. However, Sophia remained inside the portal, and she took on a semi-demonic appearance, a Tiefling, as her true blood began to show. Instantly Pickles and Zaburk shared a vision of Sophia in desperation, begging them to destroy the mirror. The demonic side of her image cursed them of destroying them through every mirror they looked through.

An attempt to shatter the mirror failed by ramming it and attacking it with Zaburk's maul as they discovered it to be bolted to the stone floor. In desperation, Pickles charges into the portal to take on Sophia head on while Zaburk attacked from the Material Plane. Cedric is ordered to rip the mirror off the ground and slam it into the stone, but despite Cedric's strength, the mirror remained intact after being slammed.

Kosher is ordered through the portal, and after a moment of hesitancy, enters and transforms into a shadow mastiff though it never had a moment to attack as Pickles destroyed Sophia.

Before the shadow mage was destroyed, Zaburk was banished by her spell to the Shadow Plane in another part. He witnessed a strange alien-like creature, not quite lizard folk and not quite draconic, tethering beams of energy to an ever-closing portal of aqua. It was only for a moment before he was sent back to the Material Plane, but he saw details with suddenly acute senses: strange devices in odd shaped scabbards at the hip and on their backs.

After the fight, they find Achamedes' journal and sift through it. They learn he scried the land searching for a good source of materials he could use for his various experiments and discovered the recently dead purple worm who peculiarly possessed an ability of extremely slow decomposing. He built an underground facility around the dead beast and enslaved the local dueragar he found not far in a stronghold. He had numerous setbacks, among which changed his gender and sent him to the Ethereal Plane. He had just managed to find the bridge-like Shadow Plane that could lead him back to the Material Plane, but could not shed the blood that was needed. Sophia would have been the ideal candidate, but she had demonic powers backing her spellcasting that caused Archamedes to be outmatched.

The duo decide against trying any of the bottles and press on after finding a secret door that leads down to an underground spring. Various poles were trying to catch anything that swam through, and a slaad tadpole was on one, to which the duo set free. It made note of recognizing them before disappearing down the stream.

Opting against crossing the water to the next door, they retreated through a second door that was on the same wall as the secret door's exit, which took them to the base of the worm's side. A large portion of the worm had been excavated out, and gold coins were scattered across the base of the interior side among the dangerous acid pools. The worm had veins that were filled with an odd, silvery liquid that seemed to attract a swarm of giant centipedes that came from the inside of the beast to attack the duo.

Though small and easy to kill, their numbers were great and nearly wiped the duo out. The centipedes contained a lethal poison that were devastating and dropped Pickles. With nearly the last of his life gone, Zaburk desperately slew the last of the centipedes and removed the poison from Pickles through a lesser restoration spell that he just learned.

Still weak from battle, they were only able to heal a moment as time pressed them on. They wished to continue to go deeper as the alchemist's journal read of Mind Flayers in the proxmity but didn't specify their location. The duo knew they were in no condition to take them on, so they retreated to the quarry to recuperate and report to Jarvis of his niece.

Jarvis was on his death bed when they returned, and the guards outside his lodge were claiming a guy name Belox being Jarvis' second in command and now governed the quarry. With some persuasion, the guards let them in with the intent to heal Jarvis.

It was clear that Jarvis had been attacked by the Rocthew, a powerful dagger that could cause poison-like symptoms without the ability to cure the poison outright.

After Zaburk's assistance on healing Jarvis, he was puzzled as the mentioning of a 2nd in command as he had no assistant or secondary commander. At this, they hear a deep voice claiming they had dug too deep and invaded an area they were not meant to see. Turning around, the duo saw a group of dueragar with Rockthews blocking the doorway…